Fourier synthetic-aperture-based time-resolved terahertz imaging
Vivek Kumar, Pitambar Mukherjee, Lorenzo Valzania, Amaury Badon, Patrick Mounaix, Sylvain Gigan
Abstract
Terahertz (THz) microscopy has attracted attention owing to distinctive characteristics of the THz frequency region, particularly non-ionizing photon energy, spectral fingerprint, and transparency to most nonpolar materials. Nevertheless, the well-known Rayleigh diffraction limit imposed on THz waves commonly constrains the resultant imaging resolution to values beyond the millimeter scale, consequently limiting the applicability in numerous emerging applications for chemical sensing and complex media imaging. In this theoretical and numerical work, we address this challenge by introducing, to our knowledge, a new imaging approach based on acquiring high-spatial frequencies by adapting the Fourier synthetic aperture approach to the THz spectral range, thus surpassing the diffraction-limited resolution. Our methodology combines multi-angle THz pulsed illumination with time-resolved field measurements, as enabled by the state-of-the-art time-domain spectroscopy technique. We demonstrate the potential of the approach for hyperspectral THz imaging of semi-transparent samples and show that the technique can reconstruct spatial and temporal features of complex inhomogeneous samples with subwavelength resolution.